Sunday, July 9, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Back from the Shadows Again by Firesign Theatre
Home by Iggy Pop
American Music by Dave Alvin & The Guilty Men
Let's Get The Band Back Together by Lucinda Williams
Creatures of Culture by The Minks
Surfin' the Lake by Sex Hogs II
Taking Care of My Home by Churchwood
Tomahawk by Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives
Today, Thursday June 29, is the birthday of Louis Burton Lindley, Jr.,
but most people who remember him know him by his stage name Slim Pickens.
Happy birthday, Slim!
Pickens, who died in 1983, was born in Kingsburg, Arizona in 1919. His dad was
a dairy farm and young Louis took a quick interest in horses -- he allegedly
got his first horse at the age of four -- and eventually was drawn to the
rodeo.
According to his obituary in
The New York Times,
"Mr. Pickens came naturally by his ability to play saddle tramps and range
bums, for before he got his first Hollywood role he had spent 20 years as a
rodeo bronco buster, trick rider and clown."
According to that obit:
Mr. Pickens said that when he dropped out of school at the age of 16 to
join a rodeo: ''My father was against rodeoing and told me he didn't want
to see my name on the entry lists ever again. While I was fretting about
what to call myself, some old boy sittin' on a wagon said, 'Why don't you
call yourself Slim Pickens, 'cause that's shore what yore prize money'll
be.''
Indeed, his pickins were slim in the rodeo biz for 20 years or so. But in 1950
he lucked out when film director William Keighley saw him perform at a
rodeo and offered him a screen test. He was hired for Keighley's Rocky Mountain
starring Errol Flynn. He played a character named "Plank."
No, Slim didn't get his name on the poster
He became the ultimate cowboy character actor, appearing in countless westerns,
mostly as a comical sidekick. He also made a ton of t.v. appearances in shows
from Annie Oakley to Circus Boy to McMillan and Wife to
B.J. and The Bear.
But undoubtedly Pickens is best known for his role in Stanley Kubrick's 1964
dark political comedy Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. There, as B-52 pilot Major T. J. "King" Kong, he made his greatest
rodeo ride of his career as , riding a nuclear bomb like a bucking bronco into
eternity.
But this is a music blog, and Slim Pickens also was a recording artist --
albeit a late-blooming one. And a friend of mine -- seriously -- had a lot to
do with that.
New Mexico singer/satirist and my longtime pal Jim Terr is responsible for
nearly all of Slim Pickens' slim discography.
Terr says he first met the actor in the 1970s at the Burbank Airport ("I
think," Terr adds). At the time, Terr says "I couldn't even think of his name.
I said, `Aren't you in the movies?' " To which Pickens responded And
"Why, I haven't been in the movies since, oh, about 9 o'clock this morning
over at Warner Brothers."
Terr continued: "I immediately had the idea of trying to get him to do a line
as `the Sheriff' on The Last Mile Ramblers''s song, `The Hurrier I Go.' I
talked to him on the plane (we were on the same flight), and he said heck
yeah."
But Terr recalled, "I had a hard time catching up with him when he was
here, hunting with his buddy [then Governor] Bruce King," who Terr notes had a
voice very similar to Pickens'. " I finally buttonholed him in the men's room
of the Albuquerque airport when he was departing."
He not only "buttonholed" Pickens, he recorded the old cowpoke's line right
there in the Sunport restroom!
After that the idea for a Pickens album was born, and in 1977 Slim Pickens was released on Terr's Blue Canyon label. As it turned out this would be
Slim's only album ever to be released, though Terr said Pickens also recorded
many unreleased tracks with Willie Nelson. Pickens also recorded a Christmas
song, which you'll see below.
Terr recalled Pickens cutting a bunch of local radio station IDs to promote
the album): "This is Slim Pickens and when I'm in Salt Lake I listen to
[whatever the station was]." Then he turned to Terr saying "God, I hope I'm
never in Salt Lake."
Here's Slim blowing harmonica with Festus in the Dodge City Jail -- perhaps
awaiting extradition to Salt Lake City -- on the beloved TV western
Gunsmoke:
Slim sings a Kinky Friedman song:
The writer of this song, Guy Clark, reportedly said Slim's take on his
masterpiece his favorite version:
The only other record Pickens released after his Blue Canyon album was this
maudlin Christmas song in 1980 -- which I'm surprised didn't become (an
ironic) smash hit on Dr. Demento's show:
Here's The Last Mile Ramblers, the band that, as I've often said, provided
much of the soundtrack for my drunken college years. Slim's restroom cameo is
at the end of the song:
The only other record Pickens released after his Blue Canyon album was this
maudlin Christmas song in 1980 -- which I'm surprised didn't become (an
ironic) smash hit on Dr. Demento's show:
Though Slim didn't appear on this song (he'd been dead for nearly 30 years), The
Offspring still paid tribute to the actor's greatest moment in
Dr. Strangelove:
Finally, while looking last week for Slim Pickens songs for this post, I
discovered that there was another Slim Pickens, a country bluesman whose real
name was Eddie Burns. Here's a song from this Slim Pickens:
Sunday, June 25, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Blowin' My Top by The Waco Brothers
Night Train From Chicago by The Jesters
Moonshine Runner by Churchwood
You're Humbuggin' Me by Ronnie Dawson
RNR Jungle Girl by Ana Threat
Black Metal by Reverend Beat-Man & Izobel Garcia
The Eggplant That Ate Chicago by Dr. West's Medicine Show & Junk Band
Two Stepping and Tacos by Dave Del Monte & The Cross County Boys
A Friend Of Mine by Marty Stuart & His Fabulous Superlatives
Tomorrow, June 22, 2023, will be the 76th birthday of Howard Kaylan, though
everyone knew him as Eddie.
Kaylan, a native New Yorker, first rose to fame in the mid sixties band The
Turtles. First touted as a 'folk-rock group (their first hit was a
Bob Dylan song), The Turtles today are best known for their schlock-rock juggernaut "Happy
Together."
A book I haven't read
So it was surprising to me -- and I assume millions of Frank Zappa fans across
God's gray Earth -- when Kaylan and fellow Turtles singer Mark Volman turned
up in 1970 as the new frontmen for The Mothers of Invention.
And in their new band Kaylan & Volman were christened "The Phlorescent
Leech & Eddie," later shortened to "Flo & Eddie."
According to Wikipedia -- and I cringe when I write those words -- Kaylan originally was The
Phlorescent Leech.
But he and Volman "were appalled to learn that the printer
had mistakenly printed the duo's stage names in the wrong order above their
photograph. ... The label refused to reprint the cover, saying that it would
cost too much money. Thus, Kaylan and Volman decided to professionally swap
stage names."
(Wikipedia attributes this anecdote to Kaylan's 2013 autobiography
Shell Shocked. I haven't read it, so I can't verify it. It might be
true but it's
always good to be skeptical of Wikipedia
as a sole source.)
Besides their solo work and their efforts with Zappa and The Turtles, Kaylan
and Volman also contributed background vocals to an impressive array of
musical acts, a few examples being T. Rex (on "Get it On"); Bruce Springsteen
"Hungry Heart"); and a couple of songs on The Ramones' Mondo Bizarro.
But let's look at some tunes where Flo and Eddie -- whichever is which -- are out
front:
Here's a tune, from Zappa's 200 Motels, that I believe is one of the best
non-comedy tracks from Zappa's Flo-and-Eddie period.
"I'm coming over shortly because I am a portly...":
"WE ARE NOT GROUPIES!":
Here are Flo & Eddie riffing on an old classic. Ethel Merman would be
proud:
Finally, here are the boys singing a Beach Boys song with one of their idols they mentioned in the
above version of The Mothers' groupie routine:
Sunday, June 18, 2023 KSFR, Santa Fe, NM Webcasting! 10 p.m. to midnight Sundays Mountain Time Host: Steve Terrell 101.1 FM
Email me during the show! terrell(at)ksfr.org
Here's my playlist :
OPENING THEME: Let It Out (Let it All Hang Out) by The Hombres
Papa Was A Steel-Headed Man by Robbie Fulks
I Got Ants In My Pants by James Brown
Burnin' Hell by The Fleshtones
Hot Tamale Baby by Buckwheat Zydeco
Sunday You Need Love by Oblivians
Sixty Minute Man by Jerry Lee Lewis
Papa Won't Leave You, Henry by Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Sunday, June 11 was the 83rd birthday of one Joseph DiNicola, who was born
in Passaic, New Jersey. You probably aren't familiar with that name, but
as a young man in his 20s, DiNicola was reborn as Joey Dee, who helped
entice the world to do the Twist.
Happy birthday, Twist King!
And soon after Joey Dee and The Starliters released "The Peppermint
Twist," a little bitty boy in Oklahoma City, discovering the joys of AM
radio, (that would be me) came to believe that Joey's stomping grounds,
the Peppermint Mint Lounge, 128 West 45th Street in New York City -- which
later in life I learned was a tiny dump of a gay bar operated by Genovese
crime family captain Matty "The Horse" Ianniello -- had to be the coolest
place on Earth.
And apparently I wasn't alone.
In October 2007, James Wolcott wrote inVanity Fairof the Peppermint Lounge:
Like CBGB's in the 70s, the Peppermint Lounge was an inauspicious
dump destined to become a pop landmark. "Adjoined to the Knickerbocker
Hotel just off Times Square, the Lounge was essentially a gay hustler
joint, frequented by sailors, lowlifes and street toughs in leather
jackets [early kin of the Ramones!]" ...
The Peppermint Lounge! You know about the Peppermint Lounge. One week
October, 1961, a few socialites, riding hard under the crop of a
couple of New York columnists, discovered the Peppermint Lounge and by
next week all of Jet Set New York was discovering the Twist, after the
manner of the first 900 decorators who ever laid eyes on an African
mask. Greta Garbo, Elsa Maxwell, Countess Bernadotte, Noel Coward,
Tennessee Williams, and the Duke of Bedford—everybody was there, and
the hindmost were laying fives, tens, and twenty-dollar bills on cops,
doormen and a couple of sets of maitre d's to get within sight of the
bandstand and a dance floor the size of somebody's kitchen.
Wolcott hilariously documents the reactions of the squares to the
Peppermint scene:
A disapproving Arthur Gelb of The New York Times, descending like an anthropologist into the amoebic bedlam of the
Peppermint Lounge, wrote of the club's chic-y clientele, "Cafe society
has not gone slumming with such energy since its forays into Harlem in
the Twenties."
He quoted Gay Telese in the New York Times -- seems like the
Gray Lady didn't dig the Twist -- saying:
Dee's booking was a rude surprise to the Met's then director, James
J. Rorimer, who wigged out when he saw photographers hastening to
photograph the guests doing the Twist in the shrine of Rembrandt and
Cezanne... Apparently no one had thought it necessary to inform Mr.
Rorimer that the Dee troupe, which has played for charity balls this
month at the Plaza Hotel and the Four Seasons restaurant, as well as
for Mayor Wagner's Victory Ball at the Astor Hotel, had been invited
to play.
But I part ways with Wolcott when he describes Joey Dee. "The
Lounge's house band was Joey Dee and the Starlighters, whose `Peppermint
Twist' topped the charts despite yappy vocals and cretinous lyrics that
can still produce cavities today ..."
I mean fuck that guy!
During various points in the heyday of The Starliters, the group included
one
James Marshall Hendrix as well as Joe Pesci (!) One of the mainstays of The Starliters was singer David Brigati, brother
of Eddie Brigati, who would go on to fame as a singer in The Young
Rascals. Other Young Rascals also played with the Starliters.
The Peppermint Lounge closed after it lost its liquor license in 1965. The
state yanked the license because Thomas C. Kelly, who was listed as the
sole owner and stockholder of the Peppermint, had been arrested for
possessing obscene materials -- "not merely pornographic or obscene, they
are unadulterated filth of the lowest nature"
according to court documents.
The club opened and reopened several times, sometimes under different
names.
The final incarnation of the Peppermint moved to 5th Avenue in 1982. It
closed in 1985, two years after The Cramps recorded their live album
Smell of Female there. The original building on West 45th Street
was unsentimentally demolished in the mid-1980s.
Ianniello controlled several gay bars in New York -- including the
Stonewall Inn
-- and later went on to control the Times Square sex trade in the 1970s.
He was convicted in 1986 on charges of extorting protection money from bar
owners (including
the Peppermint's legit creditors), pornography peddlers, and topless dancers. He also was convicted on
charges of bid rigging in construction, skimming union dues.
"The Horse" was the son of the owner of Umberto’s Clam House in Little
Italy. He reportedly was working there on the April 1972 night Joe Gallo was gunned down while celebrating his birthday with his family there. (Ianniello never was implicated in that murder.)
He died in 2012 at the age of 92, but later was immortalized by actor Garry Pastore as a
character who popped up in seven episodes of in the HBO series The Deuce, which was about the sleazy Time
Square sex trade scene of the '70s and early '80s.
Joey Dee & The Starliters, who'd hitched their star to a dance
craze, sank beneath our wisdom like a stone after Twist fever died down.
But Joey Dee & The Starliters, The Peppermint Lounge and the Twist all left a crazy mark -- or, more precisely, a twisted mark -- on the world of rock. 'n' roll. And though Chubby Checker, with the help of America's phoniest teenager Dick Clark, robbed Hank Ballard to become the national face of The Twist, for me, Chubby can't hold a peppermint candle to Joey Dee.
Here's Joey and the boys doing their biggest hit, which was produced by
Henry Glover, who previously had worked with country, rockabilly and
R&B groups on King Records. Glover teamed up with Mr. Dee and The Starliters at Morris
Levy's Roulette label (Levy, of course, having
many things in common with Matty the Horse, including Genovese ties):
Here's the follow-up song, "Hey, Let's Twist," which also was the title of a quickie movie about Joey and the twist phenomenon (and you can find the actual
movie
HERE):
Joey attempted to popularize another new teen dance, the mashed potatoes with
this tune. It always makes me hungry for hot pastrami:
And here's Joey's ode to a certain BBW who won his heart:
Finally here's a little Twistory from Ronny Elliott:
